Egypt Blockades Gaza

Where Are the Flotillas?

The activists do not care about the Palestinians' suffering as much as they are interested in advancing their anti-Israel agenda. They rarely have anything good to offer the Palestinians.

Hamas has finally admitted that it is the Egyptians, and not Israel, who have turned the Gaza Strip into a "big prison."

Ghazi Hamad, a senior official with the Hamas-controlled foreign ministry, was quoted this week as saying that the Gaza Strip has been turned into a "big prison as a result of the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing by the Egyptian authorities since June 30."

Hamad said that since then, the number of Palestinian travelers at the Rafah terminal has dropped from 1,200 to 200 per day.

The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, January 2009. (Source: International Transport Workers' Federation)

But this is a story that has not found its way to the pages of mainstream newspapers in the West because it does not in any way "implicate" Israel.

To make matters worse, the Egyptian authorities announced that the Rafah terminal would be completely closed during the four-day Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, which began on August 8.

Until recently, the charge that the Gaza Strip has been turned into a "big prison" had been made only against Israel, capturing the attention of the mainstream media and human rights organizations around the world.

But now that the charge is being made against Egypt, most international journalists, human rights organizations and even "pro-Palestine" groups, especially at university campuses in the US, Canada and Australia, have chosen to look the other way.

Residents of the Gaza Strip are asking these days: Where are all the foreign solidarity missions that used to visit the Gaza Strip to show support for Hamas and the Palestinian population? Where are all the press, human rights groups, activists?

In July, only two foreign delegations visited the Gaza Strip. By contrast, between January and June this year, about 180 delegations entered the Gaza Strip .

The "pro-Palestine" activists say they are unable to enter the Gaza Strip because of the strict security measures and travel restrictions imposed by the Egyptian authorities.

But why haven't these activists tried to organize another flotilla aid convoy to the Gaza Strip to break the Egyptian blockade?

Why haven't the "pro-Palestine" activists been sent to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing to voice solidarity with the residents of the "big prison"?

The answer is obvious: First, the activists' main goal is to condemn Israel and hold it solely responsible for the miseries of Palestinians.

The activists do not care about the Palestinians' suffering as much as they are interested in advancing their anti-Israel agenda. They devote most of their energies and efforts to inciting against Israel and rarely have anything good to offer the Palestinians.

Second, the "pro-Palestine" activists know that it would be foolish of them to mess around with the Egyptian army and security forces. The last time foreign nationals tried to stage a peaceful protest on the Egyptian side of the Rafah terminal, the Egyptian authorities did not hesitate to assault and deport many of them from the country.

Similarly, there is a problem with the way the international media is handling the current crisis in the Gaza Strip.

While the Egyptian authorities are tightening the blockade on the Gaza Strip, dozens of trucks loaded with goods and construction material continue to enter the area through the Erez Terminal from Israel.

Just this week, more than 500 truckloads containing a variety of goods and 86 tons of cooking gas were delivered from to the residents of the Gaza Strip through the Erez Terminal.

In the last week of July, 1,378 trucks carrying 37,306 tons of goods entered the Gaza Strip from Israel and a total of 2,203 people crossed through the Erez Terminal.

Since the beginning of the year, nearly 34,000 trucks carrying more than 950,000 tons of goods entered the Gaza Strip through Israel.

The Egyptians, like most Arabs, do not care about the Palestinians. They want the Palestinians to be Israel's problem and to continue relying on handouts from Western countries.

The Arabs do not care if the residents of the Gaza Strip starve to death as long as Israel will be blamed.

So why should any Arab country care at all if the international community and media continue to adopt an ostrich-like attitude toward Egypt's responsibility for the aggravating humanitarian and economic crisis in the Gaza Strip?

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6 Reader Comments

2- Nov 15, 2005: PA, Israel, and the US signed the Agreement on Movement and Access with EU as the thirst-party.http://goo.gl/FTE1r3

3- The AMA agreement provides the legal framework for West Bank and Gaza relation with its neighbours. The includes daily 100+ of trucks to cross to Gaza from Israel. As well as the Gaza sea port.

4- Vice Admiral Paul J. Bushong is a full-time U.S Security Coordinator, Israel-Palestinian Authority, and his office is in Jerusalem. His job is to make sure this agreement is functional. http://goo.gl/YKNbHV

9- The Palestinian Parliament term is four years according to the Constitution (http://goo.gl/niOruZ), which means that Hamas legislative power is over three years ago. In other words, Hamas has hijacked the Gaza Strip and its residents for its own benefit.

10-Hosni Mubarak and Omar Suleiman executed a political, humanitarian, and security policy towards Gaza under Hamas (accepting the existence of the tunnels) that pushed the border protection out of control.

11- Recent security raid on the north-east Sinai by Egypt's military and security forces provided evidences that Hamas harbored and supported terrorists groups in NE Sinai.

11- Conclusion:
a) Hamas has no public, legislative, moral or political right to hold Gaza in its situation.
b) Based on (a), Hamas sabotaged the AMA agreement concerning Gaza.
c) Hamas misused the tunnels to violate Egyptian sovereignty during 2011 and 2012 and provided aggressive services towards the domestic scene, giving an anonymous leverage of violence for the Muslim Brotherhood inside Egypt.
d) Based on (a), (b) and (c): Egypt holds no compassion, understanding or moral
support to Gaza Strip as long as Hamas is controlling it.

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Joseph • Aug 12, 2013 at 03:11

Well said. You have hit the nail right on the head. This pattern is repeated over and over when Israel is involved and yet the Palestinians are not offered citizenship or permanent residence in a single Arab or Muslim government. So much for solidarity.

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Bill Inaz • Aug 10, 2013 at 10:36

It's time to return Gaza to Egypt, to which it is historically linked. In the so-called "Two State" solution they talk about, the likelihood of a contiguous configuration with the Palestinian "state" is slim to say the least. Egypt is in chaos at this writing but it will not always be so. With this 'never-never' land under the control and, more importantly, the responsibility of a sovereign nation, diplomatic efforts have more chance of bearing fruit if people insist on being knotheads. Think, when Egypt is back on its feet and tourism resumes, if they had another 25 miles of Mediterranean coastline cleaned up and developed.

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Albert Reingewirtz • Aug 9, 2013 at 16:31

The Gaza strip was created by Egypt and "managed" by it from 1948 to 1956 and again from 1957 until 1967. All along the Arab refugees were prisoners of Egypt and used as a weapon against Israel. They trained them as "Fadayeens" to bring back aluminum pipes as proof that they were in Israel doing their terrorists jobs. Yet only a trickle was allowed to visit Egypt briefly all along. Why would anyone expect this to be different today or different from any other Arab state where the Arab refugees are still refugees supported to be such by tax dollars? No other group of refugees ever had an UNWRA to the third and fourth generation of refugees. Yet today the Arab refugees of 1948 created by Arab armies have now morphed into a "Palestinian nation" that never existed before the 60s.

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Dumisani Washington • Aug 9, 2013 at 13:30

[The activists do not care about the Palestinians' suffering as much as they are interested in advancing their anti-Israel agenda. They devote most of their energies and efforts to inciting against Israel and rarely have anything good to offer the Palestinians.... The Egyptians, like most Arabs, do not care about the Palestinians. They want the Palestinians to be Israel's problem and to continue relying on handouts from Western countries.
The Arabs do not care if the residents of the Gaza Strip starve to death as long as Israel will be blamed.]

Just wow.

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Linda Cedarbaum • Aug 9, 2013 at 09:47

The use and misuse of the Palestinian people by the entire consortium of Arab countries needs to be unveiled before the eyes of the progressive Western world. Hiding behind the multicolored cloak of anti-Semitism and hypocrisy, the shifting array of Arab countries, groups, and leaders find universal agreement only in their exploitative distaste for Palestinians combined with their delusional accusations of blame leveled at Israel for everything uncomfortable that befalls then under the sun, and then some. It is less important that the Arab world continues to operate in this age-old honor-shame approach to life that reinforces their self-oppression and their stagnation, than that we in the West wake up to their distortions. When we stop aiding their obfuscations by repeating and advancing their lies and misdirections that hide responsibility and reality, we will finally begin to 'help' them move towards solutions, however difficult or distant they may be. We can blame ourselves, our media, and our leadership for amplifying the blindness and the blame that the Arab world generates in defiance of all facts.